Frans Hals

Frans Hals

Frans Hals (c. 1581-1666) is one of the most admired masters of the great age of Dutch painting because of the spontaneity of his style and the vitality of his portrayals.

Frans Hals was probably born in Antwerp. It is likely that his parents were among the Protestants who fled from Catholic Flanders to the northern Netherlands after the Spanish took Antwerp in 1585. The earliest evidence of the presence of the Hals family in Haarlem is the record of the baptism in 1591 of Frans's brother, Dirck Hals, who also became a painter.

Between 1600 and 1603 Hals was a pupil of the Haarlem mannerist painter Karel van Mander. In 1610 Hals
became a member of the Haarlem painters' guild. His earliest surviving dated portrait, of Jacobus Zaffius, is dated 1611. There must have been earlier works that either have not come down to us or have not yet been identified. Some scholars now accept the Banquet in a Park, destroyed in World War II, as a work by Hals painted about 1610, on the basis of the free brushstroke that characterizes his work.

Some 250 paintings by Hals still exist, of which almost 200 are portraits. Except for two pictures representing the Evangelists St. Luke and St. Matthew, the rest are genre subjects, mostly portraitlike single figures, almost all in half or three-quarter length.

Early Works

The Merry Company (ca. 1616) shows Hals's early genre style:hot colors, an overcrowded composition, the exuberance of holiday revelers. In 1616 he signed the first of his great group portraits; altogether he painted six civic guard groups and three groups of regents. From the first, he revolutionized the long Dutch tradition of portraying social groups. He devised a series of brilliant solutions to the problem of giving equal emphasis to each figure while relating them in an arrangement that is both natural and compositionally integrated. These works are masterpieces of the baroque style.

Hals was most productive in the 1630s, when he began to simplify and unify his pictures. They now tended toward the monochromatic, a trend that also prevailed in Dutch landscape and still-life painting at the time. The small portrait
of Hendrick Swalmius, a Haarlem preacher (monogrammed and dated 1639), shows a striking variety of brushstrokes and a new richness of contrasts between warm and cool tones that Hals began to introduce about this time. He executed commissioned portraits with the same boldness that characterized his genre figures, of which he painted no more after 1640. He built the flesh tones and the blacks and whites of the sober costumes with an inimitable range of nuance.

While only two double portraits by Hals are known today, there are many pairs of portraits. Among the finest of his mature works of this kind are the portraits of De heer Bodolphe and Mevrouw Bodolphe (both monogrammed and dated 1643), which are notable for the liveliness of the characterizations and the related poses of the two sitters.

Late Works

After 1650 Hals's paintings became increasingly austere in color. The silvery grays and golden ochers that frequently dominated his early palette were replaced by darker tones. The alertness, vivacity, and elegance of the young couple known as the Seated Man Holding a Hat and Seated Woman Holding a Fan (ca. 1648-1650) were by the late 1650s replaced in most of his portraits by more serious expressions and somber colors.

Hals maintained his incisive observation and sure touch to the end. Over 80 years old when he painted the famous group portrait, Lady Regents of the Old Men's Alms House (traditionally dated 1664), he endowed it with a psychological intensity and technical brilliance that have made it one of the most admired works of Western art. His dynamic brushstroke was more fluid and free than ever before.

Though he received important commissions throughout his career, Hals was in financial difficulties most of his life. From 1662 until his death in 1666 he lived on a small subsidy granted him by the burgomasters of Haarlem. But the legend that he led a rowdy life is not well founded. He was a member of a respectable society of rhetoricians and of a militia company, as well as an officer of the painters' guild. His pupils, besides his sons Frans II, Reynier, and Claes, included his brother Dirck, Judith Leyster and her husband, Jan Meinse Molenaar, Adriaen van Ostade, Philips Wouwerman, and Adriaen Brouwer.

His Style

None of Hals's followers was able to reproduce the essence of his style. His apparently unrestrained brushstroke always succeeded in defining form. This was not a mere trick or a stylish device that could be imitated. It responded to a basic mode of observation. His fascinating variety of angular strokes and hatching, which give liveliness to the picture surface while they differentiate between the optical effects of different textures, foreshadowed the impressionist way of representing light falling on an object. His ability to communicate a moment of intense living has seldom been equaled.

Strangely, no drawing or print by Hals is known. There is reason to believe that some of his small-scale portraits
were intended as models for engravers. There are only two self-portraits of Hals, the first as a member of the St. George militia company, in the group portrait Officers of the Guild of Archers of St. George (probably 1639), the second a small bust-length portrait (ca. 1650), of which a number of copies exist.

Further Reading

The best book on Hals in English is Seymour Slive, Frans Hals (2 vols., 1970). Biographical material is in Michael Kitson, Frans Hals (1965). See also Jakob Rosenberg, Seymour Slive, and E. H. ter Kuile, Dutch Art and Architecture, 1600-1800 (1966). □

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Hals, Frans (c. 1581/85–1666)

Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.

HALS, FRANS (c. 1581/85–1666)

HALS, FRANS (c. 1581/85–1666), Dutch painter. Born in Antwerp, Hals emigrated to Haarlem with his family before 1591. There, he
learned his trade from the painter, theorist, and historian Karel van Mander (1548–1606) prior to van Mander's death in 1606. As Hals did not enter the painters' guild in Haarlem until 1610, it is possible that he trained with, or worked as a journeyman for, an additional master in the interim. Shortly before joining the guild, Hals married Anneke Harmensdochter, but was widowed in 1615. Two years later, Hals wedded Lysbeth Reyniers, with whom he raised fourteen children from both marriages. Perhaps in part to ease the strain of supporting his large family, Hals taught an unusually large number of pupils, many of whom went on to enjoy accomplished careers. Yet despite painting actively until the end of his life, Hals required subsistence from the Old Men's Almshouse in Haarlem, whose regents he painted in 1664, before dying destitute in 1666.

During his long career Hals painted individual portraits, primarily of the Haarlem elite; group portraits of the local militia officers and regents of charitable institutions; and single figure genre paintings. In the 1610s and 1620s, Hals produced genre imagery and portraits concurrently. His portraits from this period were highly finished and crafted in fine detail, while his genre images were much more roughly executed. Hals's pendants of Jacob Pietersz Olijcan and Aletta Hanemans from 1625 show precisely rendered embroidered damask patterning and elegantly transcribed lace borders at both the cuff and the collar. In contrast, the allegorical representation of hearing, Boy Holding a Flute (Hearing), (1626–1628; Staatliches Museum, Schwerin) displays a summary description of the youth's garments. Here, Hals employed broad sweeps rather than delicate lines to mark the white cuff, and the left shoulder between collar and jerkin is so roughly painted that the anatomical structure blurs into a series of juxtaposed swatches of color. When he devoted himself entirely to portraiture (from the late 1630s onward), Hals increasingly favored constructing his paintings from assemblages of unblended brushstrokes. In Claes Duyst van Voorhout (c. 1638; Metropolitan Museum, New York) Hals captured the play of light on the sitter's gray jacket by layering short horizontal jabs of white and light yellow pigments rather than blending his brushwork to craft supple color gradations, as he had in his earlier portraits. By the 1660s, Hals's
Portrait of a Man (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) presents the sitter's red kimono as a nearly flat surface of frenetic brushwork that shows little concern for the delineation of the body beneath it. Though not as rough as the sleeve, Hals composed the man's face as a patchwork of largely unmodulated color on which shadow and highlight are set side by side but not blended together, leaving each individual touch exposed. Unlike the works of his contemporaries that exhibited meticulous surfaces of seamlessly woven brushwork, Hals's late portraits recall the sketchy appearance of his earlier genre paintings.

Hals offered his viewers a naturalistic yet artful manner. As the historian Theodorus Schrevelius wrote in 1648, "His paintings are imbued with such force and vitality that he seems to surpass nature herself with his brush. This is seen in all his portraits . . . which are colored in such a way that they seem to live and breathe" (Schrevelius, p. 383). Hals's distinct manner, seen, for example, in his sketchy contours, heightened the sense of the sitters' activity, capturing not only his subjects' appearance but also their vivacity. In his group portraits, such as TheOfficers of the St. Hadrian Civic Guard from 1627 (Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem), Hals further activated these pieces by dispersing the bustle across the canvas through a series of uniquely posed and engaged sitters. In both his group and individual portraits Hals's unblended, broad strokes also exhibited the artist's masterful facility in handling paint. It is highly likely that seventeenth-century audiences perceived Hals's flourishes as marks of his virtuosity. In this way, Hals's paintings could have been appreciated both as representations of individuals and as objects of art.

Regard for Hals's paintings plummeted throughout the eighteenth century as his rough manner clashed with the period's more refined aesthetic. It was not until the late nineteenth century that appreciation for Hals's work was resurrected. At that time, painters like Manet and Van Gogh perceived Hals's style to be highly individualized and thus modeled their own approaches upon his direct relationship to his sitters and admired his visible, bravura brushwork. This emulation of Hals by pioneering artists demonstrates the important role that Hals played in the construction of modern conceptions of art and artistry.

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Hals, Frans

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

Frans Hals (fräns häls), c.1580–1666, Dutch painter of portraits and genre scenes, b. Antwerp. Hals spent most of his life in Haarlem, where he studied with Karel van Mander and became (1610) a member of the city's painters' guild. Although his reputation was established early, much of his long life was passed in poverty. Hals's pictures of scenes from everyday life were painted during the first half of his career, in a freer style than his formal portraits.

During the 1620s and 1630s, Hals was commissioned to paint large group portraits of various companies of the civic guards in full regalia. Some of these
"corporation pictures"
are among his finest works. Each individual, and the group as a whole, is portrayed with remarkable vivacity and informality. Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Militia (1616; Haarlem) is an imposing early work of this type.

In his later work Hals developed a cool palette, alternating blacks and grays with brilliant and sparkling color. The master reached the height of his renown in the 1630s. He painted, in these years, several groups and a number of important single portraits (e.g., Lucas de Clercq; Rijksmus.). His possessions were seized for debt in 1652, and difficult years followed. Four years before his death he was granted a pension by the town. At the age of 84 he painted two masterpieces, The Governors of the Almshouse and Lady Regents of the Almshouse (both: Haarlem). These group portraits have the same brilliant lighting and cool clarity as his gayer canvases.

Hals employed Caravaggesque lighting to capture momentary effects and give them authentic life. He worked rapidly, detailing his subjects with the utmost frankness and economy of means. His work is best seen in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. His notable paintings include Archers of St. George (three paintings), Archers of St. Adrian (two paintings), and Governors of St. Elizabeth Hospital (all: Haarlem); The Rael and Blaeuw Company,Married Couple, and The Merry Drinker (all: Rijksmus.); Laughing Cavalier (1624; Wallace Coll., London); Malle Bobbe and The Smoker (both: Metropolitan Mus.). About one third of his 250 extant works are in American collections; New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, with 11 confirmed paintings, has the most important American collection. Hals's work was not highly valued until the 19th cent.

Five of Hals's sons became painters. The foremost was Frans Hals, c.1618–c.1669, a skillful painter of still life and rustic scenes. Dirk Hals, c.1591–1656, brother of the elder Frans Hals, imitated his style but lacked his genius. He specialized in festivals and drinking scenes, his Merry Party (National Gall., London) being characteristic.

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Hals, Frans

Hals, Frans (c.1580–1666) Dutch painter. He is best known for his paintings of robust figures, such as the Laughing Cavalier (1624), and his group portraits. His more subdued later works have a dignity and strength approaching those of his contemporary, Rembrandt.

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